San José de Maipo Preventorium: three nights where the tuberculosis children lived

In the Cajón del Maipo, on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, stands the San José de Maipo Children's Preventorium: the place where, from 1929, the Red Cross looked after hundreds of children from poor families who had been exposed to tuberculosis. It still keeps their beds, their numbered clothes and their stretchers, and it is one of the places with the most paranormal legends in Chile. I spent several nights inside with Chilean investigator Walter Jara, to see whether the paranormal phenomenon was as real as people say.

This investigation is in three videos (in Spanish): the history and the first walkthrough, the investigation and the basement and the final night. This page is the full story in English.

A preventorium, not a hospital

The preventorium opened at the end of 1929, an initiative of the Chilean Red Cross, under the guidance of Dr. Juan Eduardo Ostornol, its founder and organizer, who cared deeply for the project and for the children. It operated until 1992.

It wasn't a hospital for TB patients. It was a preventorium: it took in children from low-income families who had been in contact with the disease but had no active infection. No child who was already sick or had contagious lesions was admitted. Back then there was no way to know in time whether a child was infected: often you only found out when they were already coughing up blood. The idea was to make them stronger before the disease could appear.

That's why it was built far from central Santiago, up in the mountains. In 1937 an extension was opened and the place came to care for about 200 children. The pavilions have windows everywhere, and the beds have a wooden stop to keep them away from the wall: everything was designed for ventilation.

How the children lived

To be admitted, a child had to be between 6 and 10 years old, because younger ones couldn't dress themselves yet. On arrival they went through the reception pavilion: they were entered in the admissions book, bathed, had all their clothes swapped for the institution's uniform, and spent some time under observation before joining the others.

The day was measured out: up at 7:30 in winter, washing with lukewarm water, breakfast, then breathing exercises and gymnastics outdoors, games and races until lunch, which was served under the trees at tables for six. Then half an hour of compulsory rest, each child in their own numbered chair. They ate three times a day, something almost impossible for a poor family at the time, many with ten siblings or more. At night they slept with the window open, a small emergency light on, and the head supervisor in the room next door.

Everything had a number. Clothes, pajamas, blankets: the number indicated the pavilion, and each child knew what was theirs. In the bathrooms the sinks are at different heights depending on age, and the older girls looked after the little ones: they were called "las mamitas" ("the little mothers").

And there was the sad part. Families came from distant towns and getting there meant a cart or a train ticket they couldn't afford. There were six-year-olds nobody came to see for months, while other children had visitors at the weekend.

Were children tortured here?

On the tour there is a chair with a strap, and more than one "investigator" has claimed children were tortured at the preventorium. According to the guide, there's nothing to that: people who were treated there in the 1940s have given their testimony, and what they describe is the opposite: they were grateful. The strap was probably used to hold a very small child in an adult-sized chair, or one who refused to take their medicine. You have to look at that time through the eyes of that time.

Part 1: the history and the first walkthrough

The preventorium isn't abandoned today: it is maintained and open for tours. And it keeps things that disappeared elsewhere: original stretchers for moving patients, period wheelchairs, the dentist's chair, the round table where the benefactors met, photos from 1937 with the children, the only bed left in one piece, and cupboards that, when you open them, are full of those children's clothes, sheets and bedspreads. More than the paranormal, that's what hit me: you get into those kids' story and it's impossible not to empathize.

There are candies everywhere. They aren't decoration: they're left as a trigger object. Since it's believed there is a lot of child energy, when there is an interaction a candy is left as a reward, a gesture of trust.

What people talk about most are children heard running and playing, especially on the stairs and the upper floors, and the legend that the head supervisor is still looking after them, so that nobody disturbs them.

Part 2: the investigation and the basement

At night, with a Mel Meter, an SB7 Spirit Box, infrared cameras and several other devices, Walter Jara and I started investigating.

The 1937 extension. We started the session at 3:26 a.m. There were period mattresses piled up and it was very cold. In one of the bathrooms, with two Mel Meters almost a meter apart, both registered at the same time: the peak was 18.3 milligauss, and both went back to zero at exactly the same moment. There's no wifi or anything in that bathroom that could explain a variation like that. I didn't feel anything special, but that synchronized fluctuation really caught my attention.

The stairs by the wheelchair. While Walter was changing batteries, I was left alone at the entrance, with no cameras or meters, and I started to feel something I didn't expect: oppression, as if someone were watching me and wanted me gone. It hadn't felt like that anywhere else. I went to get Walter and the equipment, and we followed that feeling to the stairs next to the wheelchair. As we went through the door, the Mel Meter went above 30 milligauss.

"In a normal investigation, when people say an entity is present, you're talking 2, 3, 4 or 5 milligauss. Seeing such a big number and being able to compare it with what I was feeling alone in that spot was incredible."

To put the number in context: these meters spike near a 220-volt cable, a microwave or a wifi router. There was none of that there.

"Qué frío" ("so cold"). That same night, near the old laundry, a child's voice saying "qué frío" was recorded. Neither of us heard it at the time. What makes it different is that four devices captured it: my camera, Walter's, my recorder and his.

The basement. According to Walter, it's the heaviest part of the preventorium: people who go down describe the same thing, something cornered that crouches behind the stairs, and batteries charged to 100% drain to zero there. Many people say it was a morgue. There is no documentation of that, and I'll say it clearly: repeating it without evidence is nonsense. What there is, is a 666 painted on the wall, symbols and a lot of candle wax: when the place was abandoned, people got in to perform rituals.

We went down at 4:46 a.m. We left devices on a stretcher in the middle of the storeroom and another on the stairs, and I asked that if something was bothered by us being there, it should touch them, or shut the heavy oak doors. We heard something like a door dragging, although above us there is concrete. We turned off the light and did an SB7 session. Nothing more.

"I have nothing to say that there are spirits in this place, or demons, or anything like that. An investigation was done, we captured the things you saw and heard, and whether that is paranormal is your call."

Part 3: the final night

We didn't just investigate: we also slept inside the preventorium. The third night was more homemade, walking with Walter through the observation pavilion, the classroom on the second floor, the linen room and the dormitories.

Walter knows the place like nobody else: he spent years investigating it. He told me that on an earlier visit, while setting up a camera, his recorder captured a male voice asking for "help", which nobody heard at the time. And that the first time they arrived, while downstairs, he heard children playing on the floor above; a colleague right next to him couldn't hear them.

He also told me about something I found very interesting as a method: one day he started noting on camera, from 1 to 10, how he felt in each place and at each hour. In his experience, from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. it feels extremely heavy, and after 3, the hour everyone says is the worst, it eases off quite a bit.

That night we placed devices at a distance so we wouldn't contaminate them, did Spirit Box sessions and asked for someone to sit in a chair with a sensor. There were no voices or readings. And that leaves me satisfied too: it means the equipment doesn't go off by itself, and if one day it does register something, it will be serious evidence.

What I take with me

The preventorium gave many children a chance at life: three meals a day, clothes, shoes, education and friends, in years when poverty and child mortality were terrible. Investigating it means touching that history, with respect. On the paranormal side I take with me two readings I couldn't explain, a voice recorded by four devices and a feeling that, for the first time, I was able to measure. It isn't proof of anything, but it isn't nothing either.

The videos (in Spanish)

Walter and I talked again about the preventorium, about EVPs and the grey nurse who appeared to him on those stairs, on the podcast: read the summary on the blog (in Spanish).

If you visit

The preventorium is in San José de Maipo, in the Cajón del Maipo, a little over an hour from Santiago. It belongs to the Chilean Red Cross and today it can be visited on guided tours. And as always: with respect. Hundreds of children lived there, and what remains is theirs.

🔦 Did you see the flashlight on the home page? One of the hidden recordings is this EVP: look for the phrase "¿Qué frío…?".